B
BartholomewB
Guest
I think your last paragraph sums it up pretty well. The historical process seems to have been something like this, in a series of four or five steps. The Christian Church began as a sect within Second Temple Judaism. At that time it was quite common for pagans to convert to Judaism, at least those pagans living in and around Judea. Pagans wishing to convert to the specifically Christian form of Judaism were at first expected to follow the same procedure as all other converts, but that rule was dropped at the insistence of Peter and Paul. That ruling seems to have triggered a split within the Christian movement, with Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians effectively forming, from then on, two separate communities. When the Roman legions suppressed two Jewish revolts, first in 70 and then in 135, Second Temple Judaism came to an end and so did the Jewish Christian Church, leaving Rabbinic Judaism on the one hand and the Gentile Church on the other as, by now, completely separate entities. From that point on, there were clearly two religions, not one.